But Google's latest OS entry comes in a market you might
not expect -- television. On Tuesday, Sony introduced the first
television hardware on the market to be powered by Google's new
Google
TV OS.

The new Google TV-enabled HDTV flat-screens from
Sony come in 24-inch ($600 USD); 32-inch ($800); 40-inch ($1,000);
and 46-inch ($1,400) varieties. They will be sold through
sonystyle.com and
at retailers like Best Buy. Best Buy will have the new TVs
stocked by Sunday.

The new Sony TV marks a departure from
"dumb" televisions that had to be attached to set-top boxes
from companies like Apple, Logitech, Roku and Boxee, in order to
provide additional functionality. With Google designing the
operating system, Sony was free to focus on adding enough hardware to
support it -- a manageable task.

Sony packed an Intel
Atom-based CE4100 consumer electronics system-on-chip (SoC) into the
television to provide it sufficient processing power. The TV's
video hardware is capable of providing a dual-view mode, with two
simultaneous high-definition feeds. You can connect the
television to the internet by ethernet cable or by Wi-Fi

The
operating system, Google TV, is actually a variant of Android and
shares much of its source code. As Android is built on a Linux
kernel, this marks yet another example of how Google is quietly
growing Linux's market share (Linus
Torvalds must be somewhere silently cheering).

The OS
is streamlined to provide easy web browsing, with a focus on common
activities like reading the news, posting to Twitter/Facebook, and
running searches. Much like Microsoft did with Bing for
its upcoming
Windows Phone 7, Google has fine-tuned a version of its search
engine that's more friendly for TV uses, with a propensity to display
TV show schedules prominently in the results. As with any
browser, users can bookmark their favorite content for a speedy
return at a later date.

One of Google's closest competitors,
the new
$99 Apple TV, has a lot to worry about from Google's new OS.
It is capable of playing 1080p video, while the Apple box can only
muster 720p. And while Apple
has banned apps from its set-top (for now), Google has
embraced them, with the new TVs soon being able to fully access the
Android market (Sony's page says this feature is "Coming in
2011"). The Sony TVs come
preloaded with CNBC, Napster, NBA, Netflix, Pandora,
Twitter, and YouTube apps.

The TV will soon have a plethora of
control options. Current users must utilize a bulky six-inch
remote that packs an optical mouse pointer, a mini keyboard, a home
button, and more. Soon, though, Google will be releasing an app
that will allow Android phone owners to use touch and voice controls
on their phone to navigate through their television's menus.

But
Google isn't abandoning those with "dumb" TVs who are
loathe to upgrade to a new set like the slick Sony HDTVs.
Accompanying the HDTV launch is a new $400 USD Blu-Ray player from
Sony that come with Google TV installed inside. This unit comes
with the same kind of advantages as its television brethren --
eliminating the superfluous set-top box, offering full 1080p, and
offering access to useful apps.

Surveying the Google TV
launch, one can't help but get the notion that Google is plotting the
demise of the traditional personal computer. After all, much
like Apple, it is luring customers away from their desktops and is
getting them to increasingly devote their computing time to their
smart phones and tablets. And now it's doing the same thing
with televisions. Given the success of Android, it seems that
makers of traditional PC hardware and software should be very
concerned.

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